The goal of this research is to develop the prototype of a tactile sensing platform for anthropomorphic manipulation research. We investigate this problem through the fabrication and simple control of a planar 2-DOF robotic ...

Parallel shared-memory machines with hundreds or thousands of processor-memory nodes have been built; in the future we will see machines with millions or even billions of nodes. Associated with such large systems is a new ...

This robot has low natural frequencies of vibration. Insights into the problems of designing joint and link flexibility are discussed. The robot has three flexible rotary actuators and two flexible, interchangeable ...

The aim of this thesis was to explore the design of interactive computer learning environments. The particular learning domain selected was Newtonian dynamics. Newtonian dynamics was chosen because it is an important ...

This thesis describes a mechanical assembly system called LAMA (Language for Automatic Mechanical Assembly). The goal of the work was to create a mechanical assembly system that transforms a high-level description of an ...

This report presents a set of representations methodologies and tools for the purpose of visualizing, analyzing and designing functional shapes in terms of constraints on motion. The core of the research is an interactive ...

How can one represent the meaning of English sentences in a formal logical notation such that the translation of English into this logical form is simple and general? This report answers this question for a particular ...

This report presents issues relating to the kinematics and control of dexterous robotic hands using the Utah-MIT hand as an illustrative example. The emphasis throughout is on the actual implementation and testing of ...

This report documents our work in exploring active balance for dynamic legged systems for the period from September 1985 through September 1989. The purpose of this research is to build a foundation of knowledge that ...

Computational theories of action have generally understood the organized nature of human activity through the construction and execution of plans. By consigning the phenomena of contingency and improvisation to ...

This thesis shows how to detect boundaries on the basis of motion information alone. The detection is performed in two stages: (i) the local estimation of motion discontinuities and of the visual flowsfield; (ii) the ...

Previous research in force control has focused on the choice of appropriate servo implementation without corresponding regard to the choice of mechanical hardware. This report analyzes the effect of mechanical properties ...

The MIT-Scheme program development environment includes a general-purpose text editor, Edwin, that has an extension language, Edwin Scheme. Edwin is very similar to another general-purpose text editor, GNU Emacs, which ...

Babies are born with simple manipulation capabilities such as reflexes to perceived stimuli. Initial discoveries by babies are accidental until they become coordinated and curious enough to actively investigate their ...

Enhanced reality visualization is the process of enhancing an image by adding to it information which is not present in the original image. A wide variety of information can be added to an image ranging from hidden ...

Humans can effortlessly manipulate objects in their hands, dexterously sliding and twisting them within their grasp. Robots, however, have none of these capabilities, they simply grasp objects rigidly in their end ...

Robots must plan and execute tasks in the presence of uncertainty. Uncertainty arises from sensing errors, control errors, and uncertainty in the geometry of the environment. The last, which is called model error, has ...

There has been recent interest in using temporal difference learning methods to attack problems of prediction and control. While these algorithms have been brought to bear on many problems, they remain poorly understood. ...